Allows users to perform analysis of registry before deciding if they want or need to defrag it.

Users have the option to reboot computer immediately and defrag registry, or schedule a defrag to occur next time the computer is rebooted.

Has the option to automatically create System Restore points before registry is defragged.

Provides users with a detailed report after defragmentation has been finished.

{/rw_good} –>

{rw_bad}

Nothing is really “wrong” with the program itself, as far as I can tell.

{/rw_bad} –>

{rw_score} {for=”Ease of Use” value=”10″}Literally point and click; extremely easy to use. {/for} {for=”Performance” value=”10″}For being a registry defragger, Auslogics Registry Defrag performs well (probably one of the best registry defraggers out there), hence I give it a 10. However, the effectiveness of registry defraggers in general varies highly on a case-to-case basis. {/for} {for=”Usefulness” value=”3″}Registry defraggers really are not too useful; the performance gain they provide to your computer, if any at all, is often negligible. {/for} {for=”Price” value=”6″}For a standalone registry defragger, $19.95 is overpriced. In my opinion $14.95 is a better price for this software. In fact, I would even go as far to say standalone registry defraggers are worth no more than $10, but the extra $5 premium is tacked onto Auslogics Registry Defrag because it comes from a premium company. {/for} {for=”Final Score” value=”8″} {/for} {/rw_score} –>

You can, of course, opt-out of installing the toolbar and making Ask.com your homepage but it makes me really sad that a commercial, paid software comes bundled with such things.

{/rw_badb} –>

{rw_verdict}[tupr] {/rw_verdict} –>

As the name implies, Auslogics Registry Defrag is a registry defragmentation program. What exactly is registry defragmentation? Most of have heard of, and have performed, hard drive defragmentation before; registry defragmentation is a similar concept to hard drive defragging. To better understand what registry defragmentation is, lets first understand what hard drive defragmentation is.

Lets say you have a bookshelf that can hold up to 100 books. Over time you purchase books and place them on the bookshelf wherever you find space; in other words you are not very particular about putting the books in any specific order, like alphabetical order. As time goes on and your bookshelf gets filled, it becomes harder and harder for you to find a specific book because the books on the bookshelf are placed randomly (in no specific order). One day you are fed up with having to spend 10 minutes every time you need to find a book so you decide to alphabetize all your 100 books. Thus, you invest 30 minutes into properly alphabetizing all your books. After you have alphabetized the bookshelf, it becomes a lot easier and a lot quicker to find a specific book. Hard drive fragmentation and defragmentation is a similar concept.

Over time your hard drive gets fragmented as files are placed in the first open spot available; over time it starts to take longer and longer for your computer to find the specific file it needs because the files are in no specific order (figuratively speaking). When you defrag your hard drive, it is like alphabetizing your bookshelf: the files on the hard drive are put in order thus making it easier and quicker for Windows to find them when they are needed. The same thing (fragmentation) that happens to your hard drive happens to the registry, but on a smaller scale.

Lets say now instead of 100 books, you only have 5 books. Yes, it does require less effort and time to find a specific book if the 5 books are in alphabetical order as opposed to being in a random order, but the amount of effort and time saved is negligible because there are only a small number of books to deal with. This, in simplistic terms, describes the similarities and differences between hard drive fragmentation and registry fragmentation. With hard drives being hundreds of gigabytes big, fragmentation can really hurt performance, hence why defragging the hard drive often results in a noticeable performance increase (however, it does vary on a case-to-case basis, depending on how fragmented your hard drive is). Registries, on the other hand, are not nearly as large as hard drives. Yes, defragging them may increase performance, but the performance increase is often negligible.

There is, however, one extra benefit to defragging registries not depicted in the analogy above. When Windows is running, the registry is loaded into your RAM. So, when you defrag the registry, you make it smaller (how much smaller depends on how large and fragmented the registry was to begin with); when your registry is smaller, it will take up less space when loaded into your RAM. Don’t get your hopes but, though – the amount of RAM recovered by having a smaller registry does not amount to a whole lot of RAM because the registry is often only compacted a few MB, if any at all.

To summarize, yes defragging the registry will result in performance increase (if you do the defragging with quality software which won’t implode your computer) but the performance increase is not that much. More often than not, people with older, weaker machines will benefit more from registry defraggers than people with newer, more powerful machines (because newer computers typically have increased computing power making the performance increase gained from a defragged registry all the more negligible). But even people with older, weaker machines shouldn’t expect miracles, because defragging the registry won’t deliver any.

That said, Auslogics Registry Defrag is one such “quality software” I referred to in the last paragraph – it is easy to use (in fact very easy to use), and defrags the registry quickly, safely, and completely. If you do decide you want a registry defragger, Auslogics Registry Defrag will grind out the most performance increase one can receive from registry defragmentation.

Using Auslogics Registry Defrag is very, very easy:

Step 1 – Run the program

(Take note of the option that automatically creates a System Restore point before defragmentation.)

Step 2 – Analyze the registry

Step 3 – Read the analysis report and decide if your registry is fragmented enough for you to defrag

Step 4 – Select when you want to defrag the registry (if you don’t want to defrag the registry, just close the program) – right now, or during next computer reboot:

(Screenshot clipped from the developer’s website.)

If you select to defrag now, your computer will be rebooted and the defragmentation will occur during reboot. If you select to defrag later, defragmentation will be scheduled to occur during the next time you reboot your computer. (Defragmentation occurs during reboot and not while Windows is running because programs use the registry while Windows is running and compacting the registry at that time is darn, right hard.)

Step 6 – Read the detailed report (or, you can just click “Close” if you won’t want to read the report)

You can of course run Auslogics Registry Defrag as many times you want and defrag your computer’s registry whenever you want. However, don’t run Auslogics Registry Defrag too many times, too quickly because if the registry is not fragmented, you will be turned away and told there is nothing to defragment:

In terms of performance, Auslogics Registry Defrag is one of the best. As I already mentioned, Auslogics Registry Defrag works very quickly, and defrags the registry very well, and is a fairly safe program. In fact, Auslogics Registry Defrag is so good in its class that I don’t have anything “bad” to say about it (which is a first, since I always have something to say) except that it is a bit overpriced. (Oh, and I am very unhappy with the Ask.com toolbar that comes bundled with Auslogics Registry Defrag, but that is another issue and not directly related to the program itself like performance and price are.)

This review was conducted on a laptop running Windows 7 Professional 32-bit. The specs of the laptop are as follows: 3GB of RAM, a Radeon HD 2600 512MB graphics card, and an Intel T8300 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor.

{rw_freea}

All the of following are either standalone registry defrag software, or are system utilities that have a registry defrag component to them:

…and there are many more out there (share in comments below if you know of them).

{/rw_freea} –>

{rw_verdict2}Without a doubt Auslogics Registry Defrag is one of the best registry defraggers out there; thumbs up and recommended to those that need or want it. However, in the end, the quality of the software may be excellent but it is still a registry defragger, something most people shouldn’t have the need for. {/rw_verdict2} –>

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About Ashraf

Happily married to the most beautiful woman ever, Ashraf is the founder of dotTech. Ashraf spends insane hours on dotTech (usually writing articles but sometimes doing absolutely nothing except staring). Yes he is weird, but he is also very friendly.

23 comments

anna

cannot get this program off of my pc! Tried to uninstall, but no luck. What’s up with not being able to get it off? Only wanted to try auslogics defrag, and on my control panel, it says auslogics, but ia really ask.com Message says bad install, bit cannot get the darned thing off! Any help?

Murugesan

Thanks for the review Ashraf. Some AV like bitdefender won’t allow registry defrag even during boot and some will get corrupted after defrag. So the user must be careful though it may not be the fault of the registry defrag software but conflict with av.

janet

I just tried it out….My system is ten years old and Auslogistics Reg Defrag did the analysis and said I had 0% fragmentation! Since I have 361 programs on it and have installed and uninstalled MANY, how would one explain that…???

janet

I have AUSLOGISTICS BOOTSPEED 4.0.0.37 (from either dotTech or Gaotd) which includes a registry defragger in addition to a reg cleaner. Any way to tell if it’s the same? I find their regular defragger by far the best of the many I have tried! Never used its reg defragger and cleaner out of fear……

gpc111

Thank you for the great review Ashraf. I have Auslogics Registry Defrag 5.0 now. While I rarely use it, it does a good job. I think this was one of the last version that was totally free. I do agree with you on the fact that defraging the registry may have little effects on your system. It’s like the modern day snake oil. The sellers claim it to be a cure all for all of your computer’s needs yet no bench mark will back up their claims. Auslogics is a respected vendor and it’s nice to see GAOTD attract this type of vendor. I hope this is a trend that continues.

Gioneo

(Defragmentation occurs during reboot and not while Windows is running because programs use the registry while Windows is running and compacting the registry at that time is darn, right hard.) In my opinion this is a big plus the program has over the alternatives (if they don’t have it themselves). I tried the QuickSys RegDefrag, it does not. I haven’t tried the others yet…

Josh

Tried both NTREGOPT and Auslogics. After defragging the registry with NTREGOPT, Auslogics had nothing to do. Guess I’ll just stick with NTREGOPT. It’s small, quite fast, has never broken anything on my PC and is still free.

Ello

phoenix_rising

@unicorn02: I agree. NTREGOPT and its sister product Erunt are two of my must-have progs. And while I don’t reg defrag very often (usually only when I’ve done a big clean out of files and progs on my comp), when I do I use it.

Ashraf

@unicorn02:I don’t know for sure since I never personally have used Wondershare Registry Defrag, but logically one has to ask themselves, how can you defrag the registry again right after you just defragged it? Something fishy has to be going on.

unicorn02

I ran Wondershare Registry Defrag after running Auslogics and it further compressed down the Registry by 83% to just 3,5MB. This result is more than scary, but my VM seems to work fine. Then I reran Wondershare Registry Defrag and it reported again a reduction of 83% on next defrag. What’s this all about? Wondershare has two modes of defrag (quick and full), so it seems to have a competitive edge… But somehow the Analysis Results leave a strange taste… I am interested in other observations.

Gioneo

Ashraf

@Jabtano:This isn’t a registry cleaner. It is a registry defragger. While yes defragging the registry does clean up the registry a bit by removing some registry entries, a cleaner and defragger are two very different things.

Jabtano

I’m always cautious when it comes to registry cleaners. I have used the one on Glary, and win utilities. both seem to do a decent job at it. i just downloaded this one. it worked ok but right after using it i ran Glarys and got 10 entry errors.